Reading Edge Effects, Jan Conn’s masterful eighth collection, is a little like looking at Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of real industrial wastelands; both visions are as gorgeous as they are terrifying, platforms for thought, even for activism, depending as they do on the energy of the viewer/reader for completion.

Peony Vertigo is Jan Conn's tenth book of poetry. Her poetry has received a CBC Literary Prize, the inaugural P.K. Page Founder's Award, and in 2016 was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a member of the collaborative writing group Yoko's Dogs whose publications include, most recently, Caution Tape (Collusion Press, 2021). She works full-time as a Research Scientist and Professor at the New York State Department of Health in Albany, NY and State University of New York at Albany on the vector biology and evolution of Latin American mosquito vectors. She is also a visual artist. She lives in rural western Massachusetts.

Jan Conn's profile page

For all of her scientific — I mean, accurate — observation, Conn arrives, surprisingly, at mysticism, regularly: “To become more buoyant,/I eat breakfast — duckweed and water hyacinth.//Into the dead of night the errant blue of the river/carries the Milky Way and me, glimmering and wavering.” Conn is a poet for thinkers who dream. Take it on faith.

Halifax Chronicle-Herald